When hierarchy is turned on its head: the staff bully

Every firm has at least one: the secretary with the “holier than thou” attitude; the senior paralegal who tries to assign work to a junior associate; the office administrator who tries to tell you how to run your case.

A reader posted this question the other day: “[C]ould you write about bullying of junior associates by support staff like paralegals and secretaries? I would be interested in that one…yeah.”

Let me start by offering a distinction between perceived bullying and actual bullying. Perceived bullying is when a junior associate feels threatened when a secretary or paralegal has greater knowledge and makes it known. Actual bullying is, well, bullying — verbal or psychological abuse or intimidation. Put downs, screaming, punching… okay, maybe not punching, but you get the idea.

Actual bullying is in some ways the simpler of the two to address. Bullies will always exist in this world. They come in all shapes and sizes, and they are certainly not limited to support staff. There are partner bullies and associate bullies. You can spot a bully a mile away for his or her ability to intimidate and threaten others. These are the people who everyone tries to avoid, no one wants to deal with, and almost no one crosses. They transcend class, gender, age — but they have one thing in common: they are tolerated by the firm. Surprisingly, bullies are generally accommodated and given wide latitude to roam the halls and terrorize their victims. Why? Because they tend to be incredibly competent. If they weren’t, they’d be thrown out in a billable minute. Bad attitude + bad work product = fired. Unfortunately, bullies–despite their bad attitudes–are actually productive, competent workers (sometimes the best at what they do), and their attitudes are therefore forgiven, ignored, or otherwise swept under the rug.

Perceived bullying, on the other hand, is a more complicated issue. In this scenario, when a junior associate feels like he or she is being “bullied,” it may arise from the fact that the particular staff member has superior knowledge or experience. This happens frequently at law firms, yet it’s an issue that generally does not get addressed. Here’s the scene: entry-level associate “Junior” waltzes into large, prestigious BigLaw firm armed with a J.D. from Stanford or Harvard. Junior has succeeded his entire life; he’s a winner. BigLaw is his very first job. He is smart as all heck, but as green as a cucumber. He can analyze fact patterns better than anyone else, but doesn’t know the first thing about practicing law. Junior has no clue that a brief filed in the C.D. Cal requires 14 point font, doesn’t know whether or not to count weekends when calendaring, doesn’t realize that he needs to have a document production copied before reviewing it.

Along comes our legal secretary “Mandy.” She’s had 25 years of legal experience as a secretary, and has spent the last 18 years at BigLaw firm. She knows the court filing procedures of every district in the state like the back of her hand. Federal court, state court, appeals court–you name it, she knows it. Mandy is not an actual bully, but at her age, she has little tolerance for young first-years like Junior telling her what to do when it’s clear he doesn’t have the slightest clue. So when Junior tells her the way in which to file a brief, she tells him he’s wrong, and it has to be done another way.

Bullying? or just necessary growing pains for Junior?

It’s a complex issue because so much of it depends on context. In the example above, Junior was simply wrong. And if you’re wrong, and your secretary corrects you, I’d hope that you would be thanking her for saving your butt instead of getting defensive over a perceived breach of etiquette. On the other hand, there are grayer areas, multiple ways in which to do something where Junior may want to have it done one way and Mandy says, no, I’ve been doing it this way for years and I’m not changing now, especially for a young squirt like you. Those issues can be addressed, but in delicate ways. That will be the subject of a future post. For now, I leave you with this thought:

If you feel like you’ve been bullied, ask yourself this: is Mandy really an actual bully, or are you just sensitive to the fact that you don’t have a clue as to what you’re doing?